Reagan and Carter go Head to Giant Head...and I Talk to President Polk. Yes, THE President Polk.

This week I finished putting together the latest fun YERT video - a Presidents' Day special which, while we're now several days past Presidents' Day, is at least out in the blogosphere before Washington's Birthday. Our YERT travels took us to President's Park in Lead, SD where 20-foot concrete President heads abound and one feels like a boy among giants - literally. To make this video, I decided to comb through hours of old audio and video recordings of actual presidential speeches to piece together Lincoln's thoughts on current population trends, Roosevelt's attitude about the stimulus plan, and Reagan's real feelings about Jimmy Carter's solar panels on the White House. Check out the video below and the accompanying blog with all kinds of goodies at YERT's blog.




The fringe benefit of all this is that I now know more about presidential speeches than I ever thought possible. And having listened to countless hours of inaugural speeches and addresses to the nation, one thing is clear - the more things change, the more they stay the same. Reagan's and Carter's inaugural addresses are particularly interesting from a political history and positioning perspective, and FDR's fireside chats are incredibly relevant these days. But perhaps most timely and touching are Carter's energy speeches (most of all his "malaise" or "crisis of confidence" speech of 1979). I would contend that he was the most honest and thoughtful president we've had in the last 60 years, maybe more. Unfortunately, while it's an admirable human character trait, in Carter's case naked honesty proved to be a political liability. Thirty years later, perhaps we are finally ready to hear that 1979 speech again and take appropriate action. One point of interest is how our attitude toward coal power has evolved as our understanding of its relationship to climate change has crystallized - there was little if any concern about that in Carter's era. I can't help but think that we're now reaping the results of having not listened to Carter thirty years ago. Let's hope we can improve on that soon.